The Final Night
by Ashliebelle
Summary: James and Lily get into a terrible fight, causing James to storm away from his house and face his past. He may not want to be a father, but the memory of his own father gives him inspiration. (One Shot - Rewritten - Finished)


James pulled his coat from the hook, and angrily walked into the brisk October air, slamming the front door behind him. His young son could usually sleep through anything, but had begun to wail at the noise; James could hear him, even from outside.  
  
But he didn't know about nor hear the silent tears of his wife.  
  
James took a walk. A few trick-or-treaters were still lingering outside of their houses. Their excited voices carried neatly across the neighborhood, their plans of swapping candy and then their parents fussing about them getting in out of the cold. James couldn't pay attention because the memory of his own angry words were filling his head.  
  
He kicked a piece of hard candy that was left, forgotten, on the sidewalk. It skipped into the street, breaking into many pieces within its thin plastic wrapper  
  
"Why don't you just grow up?" Lily had asked him, furiously poking her wand at the sink so that it filled with hot water.  
  
"Maybe I don't want to grow up!" James yelled back. "It certainly wasn't my idea to have a kid right after we got married!"  
  
"Well, you've got a son now, so you don't have a choice." Her green eyes glinted with fury.  
  
"You're right!" He threw up his arms in defeat. "I have no control of my life, I forgot!"  
  
"Why are you acting like this is my fault?" Lily asked. "I'm not the one who's neglecting our child!"  
  
"I'm not neglecting Harry!" James said wildly. "One night! I can't spend one night with some friends?"  
  
"It's Halloween, James, we had it planned out! Last year he was too young, but this year you said we'd go out trick-or-treating. My dad was the same way, always making promises and then breaking them, and your son doesn't deserve that!"  
  
James pressed his lips together.  
  
"He didn't get to go out at all because we were waiting all night for you to get home."  
  
"We'll go out next year."  
  
"God, James, when are you going to stop pretending to be a father and actually become one?"  
  
"I don't want to be one! I don't want to raise a family and I don't want..." – he gestured toward Lily – "I don't want this!"  
  
James shoved his hands into his coat pockets, and sighed a misty breath into the wind. He meant he didn't want Lily's accusations of being a bad father, but he could tell by the look in her eyes that she took it much more deeply than he meant.

They shouldn't have had a family, though; he did mean to say that. Not so soon, and especially not when He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named was so determined to find them. James loved his son, but as soon as Harry was born, things started to go downhill. The close calls with You-Know-Who became more treacherous than ever, and he became more determined to find James and Lily. Or maybe it just seemed that way because they had an infant to take care of and they were too young to handle it on top of everything else.  
  
As James walked through Godric's Hollow, he wished Harry could have come just a few years later.  
  
He was a father, though. He couldn't run from that, no matter how hard he wished it. He would never measure up to his own father, he realized with a terrible wrench of his heart. His father was old and wise, and always seemed to know what to say. He was a quiet man, unlike James, and understanding. It would take a very understanding man to let Sirius Black live with them, and James' father took him in with open arms.  
  
James remembered the night he and Sirius returned from Hogwarts, graduated and ready to take on the wizarding world. It was a hot night, and Sirius had taken off his shirt to impress some muggle girls in James' neighborhood.  
  
When they turned the corner of James' street, their skin took on a sickly green glow. Just above his parents' house, the Dark Mark hung like an ominous ghost. Sirius ran inside, James on his heels._  
_  
James didn't want to think about that night, and shook himself for recalling it. Whenever his mind threatened to remember, he squashed it down until he could manage to think about something else. But this night, he couldn't. He was already too upset from his fight with Lily to suppress it, and he had to swallow roughly to keep himself from getting teary.  
  
For an hour, James walked through the streets trying to forget that night, and trying to stay mad at Lily. She didn't understand him or what You-Know-Who had put him through. She had family left, no matter how rotten they might be. He was alone except for a nagging wife, and a kid he wasn't prepared to raise.

Sirius tried to stop him from going into the room where his parents died, but James pushed his way past the threshold of the doorway. Their lifeless eyes stared, as if terrified at the sight of their now-grown son. His father, on whom he could always rely to be there for him, had stared at James in horror.

Sirius pushed him back outside, back into the green glow of the Dark Mark, where James couldn't produce any tears for his deceased parents while he stared at the cement.

Before he knew it, James's feet had walked him through Godric's Hollow, and he was back at his own house where he could no longer hear Harry's cries.  
  
All of a sudden, the Dark Mark appeared over his house, as if straight from his memory.  
  
He stepped backward, tripping over his own feet. James ended up in a heap on the sidewalk, his eyes shut tightly and his heart pounding wildly. He couldn't bear it. Not again. Not his family; they were all he had.

He couldn't bear to open his eyes to confirm what he'd seen, so he kept them shut, wildly trying to will away the images of Lily and Harry staring at him in horror, which his terrible mind had invented instantly at the sight of the skull and snake.  
  
James hadn't cried when Lily said she would marry him, or when Harry was born, and he didn't cry when he found his dead parents, but tears leaked out of his closed eyes as he tried to banish the thought of his dead wife and child. The last thing he told Lily was that he didn't want her. The last thing he did to Harry was that he broke a promise. He cried harder, sobs trembling through his body. He would never forgive himself.

He looked back up at the house, but there was no Dark Mark.  
  
James got up shakily and rubbed his wet eyes. The air was still and empty; the Dark Mark was just part of his memory.  
  
James ran into the house, still not positive that the Dark Mark was imagined.  
  
"Lily? Lily!" he called, hanging up his coat by the open front door.  
  
"Oh now don't you start on me again," she said, turning the corner from the kitchen. "If you don't want me anymore, you can just... James?" Lily stopped when she saw his face. They stared at each other for a long moment.  
  
"Oh Lily, thank God!" James wrapped his arms around his wife. He closed his eyes and more tears spilled out. "I'm so sorry," he whispered. "I'm SO sorry."  
  
Lily was still for a long moment before wrapping her own arms around James. He felt her shake her head against his shoulder. "I'm sorry too. You're not a bad father. You're not." She pushed away from their hug so they could look at each other again.  
  
"I," James croaked, "am so sorry. I love you more than anything in this world." They exchanged a passionate kiss, James' tears smearing onto Lily's face. The front door was still open and the air chilled their wet cheeks.  
  
"I will always be there for you," James promised, "and for Harry."  
  
Lily, who had also started to cry, laughed through her tears.

"I mean it," James whispered. "I know I've broken some promises but—"

"No, I believe you," she said, running her hand through James' messy hair. "I've just got to tell you something, and I don't know how to say it. I mean, I was going to tell you earlier but then things got crazy..."

"What? What is it?" James couldn't help looking somewhat alarmed.

She pulled James' head down and whispered into his ear. "You're going to be a daddy... again."  
  
Late that night, James was up in Harry's room, watching him sleep. He couldn't believe how wonderful life was.  
  
"My two children," he whispered out loud, introducing them to an imaginary person, and he smiled. Lily crept up behind him and hugged him from behind.

"I haven't told anyone yet, of course," she murmured. "Although it was hard not to call Remus when you left like you did."

"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I won't leave like that again." He turned to Harry. "You hear that? I'll never leave you, son. Never." He stroked Harry's soft dark hair, secretly promising that he would be there for his son and his future baby forever.


End file.
